free and open source software on a smartphonePosted: 31-Jul-2014 [Source: ars technica]

[All-FOSS Android is possible, but you're going to make a lot of tradeoffs.]

Ron Amadeo -- "Android is a Google product—it's designed and built from the ground up to integrate with Google services and be a cloud-powered OS. A lot of Android is open source, though, and there's nothing that says you have to use it the way that Google would prefer. With some work, it’s possible to turn a modern Android smartphone into a Google-less, completely open device—so we wanted to try just that. After dusting off the Nexus 4 and grabbing a copy of the open source parts of Android, we jumped off the grid and dumped all the proprietary Google and cloud-based services you'd normally use on Android. Instead, this experiment runs entirely on open source alternatives. FOSS or bust!

Android is open—except for all the good parts.
Before we begin, we have a few slight notes. FOSS stands for "free and open source software," and when we say "free" we don't mean free of cost, but free of restrictions. It's software that we can do whatever we want to, including copy, modify, and redistribute."